They came out and faced the fierce conditions to take to picket lines across the country.
Up to 35,000 nurses held placards, signs, whistles and chants urging Leo Varadkar and Simon Harris to just give them better working conditions.
Instead of caring for patients as normal, they were forced to take to the streets outside hospitals asking for basic nursing standards seen in almost every other country in Europe.
Today was the first day that trade unions told nurses to down tools and take to the picket line. People were told to avoid A&E services unless absolutely necessary in other to give the nurses that did have to work today a fighting chance and keeping their house in order.
Triage nurses worked along with nurses in other essential areas but they were all very well represented up and down the length of the country, with the public beeping their horns as they drove by.
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